


rose diamond or white (dazzle me with light)

by Amelinda



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 14:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13191855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amelinda/pseuds/Amelinda
Summary: This time, things are different for Albus and Gellert. This time, she survives.





	rose diamond or white (dazzle me with light)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Candyphoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Candyphoenix/gifts).



 

> "There is a melody born of melody,  
>  Which melts the world into a sea:  
>  Toil could never compass it;  
>  Art its height could never hit;  
>  It came never out of wit;  
>  But a music music-born  
>  Well may Jove and Juno scorn.  
>  Thy beauty, if it lack the fire  
>  Which drives me mad with sweet desire,  
>  What boots it? what the soldier's mail,  
>  Unless he conquer and prevail?"
> 
> \- "Fate" by Ralph Waldo Emerson

\- x -

Preference, taste, desire. These concepts, to Albus, were well out of reach for the first bit of life. Others thought his life perfect. There was Aberforth who yearned for Mother’s preference (no competition). There were the other Hogwarts students who craved his wit and talent (less competition). He even made the famous envious, had them write their words of awe, had them offer opportunities to meet even greater, more famous witches and wizards. He had power, sure. He was well on his way to redeeming the Dumbledore name from infamy.

But this ambition was not quite something he desired. At least, not with the same raw, coiling passion he desired the undesirable.

Preference, taste. He could express it for those who didn’t inspire the heat. He was not as good-looking as the others, and he wasn’t an athlete, but the painted lips did seek him, thought him attractive for the vivid world within. And their friendships were precious, no doubt. There simply was something _different_ about the heat, the carnal spin of sensation puberty cropped and watered. When the clothes fell to the dormitory floor, when the boys had their fun running about and causing mayhem, he felt a hunger he couldn’t sate, learned of a preference he couldn’t encourage and one day he simply, almost, nearly said to the handsome Ravenclaw Seeker—

Well. Never mind that.

Old Cyrillic was his preference. One long stroke, a quick repeal, the faintest touch of bone black ink on parchment. The sophistication of it was a bit much for a draft, he’d later admit, but the process was a treat, an art amidst the academe. Albus fancied himself a scholar with an eye for aesthetics.

It was a good enough explanation for why a masterpiece lounged on his pillow, all his golden curls splaying over white cotton.

“Albus, you bore,” Gellert admonished. The faint hiss of Bavaria lingered on his tongue. “Am I to watch you write all day, or do you have something more interesting in mind?”

Albus smiled and turned his chair, aided by wandless magic; to be eighteen and free of the Trace was a privilege he flaunted. Gellert, sixteen and subject to the law, scowled and smirked his fine, full lips.

“Have something in mind?”

Gellert eased up and stretched his arms. The robe sleeves slung down around his shoulders, exposing strong, lean arms which tightened with a flex. He released and sighed, eyes finding the window beside him. “Godric’s Hollow is getting a bit dull, I think.”

Outside the half-raised window, wherein came a light breeze, the cobblestone path was lifeless. Bathilda would likely break from her writing soon and huff tobacco near the wrought-iron fencing, perhaps wave over Mr. Menby and have him sort out her unruly bubotuber patch. Dullness wasn’t the greatest sin in Godric’s Hollow. Albus knew what Gellert hated most: infiltration. The timber-framed homes and quaint stone churches had long lost the spark of magic which built them, were all owned and occupied by Muggle families. That was the call of the twentieth century. Move out the way, wizards, the Muggles need space to sprawl and plunder. ‘Breeding like rats,’ Gellert once said, and Albus didn’t entirely disagree.

“You could enroll in Hogwarts come September,” suggested Albus.

Gellert scoffed. “Yes, grand idea. Maybe I could dorm with your idiot brother and we could stay up reading _Beedle_ and eating chocolate frogs.”

“It doesn’t sound like an unpleasant way to end a night,” Albus said, glowering. “And Aberforth isn’t an idiot. He’s quite clever when he applies himself.”

With the roll of his eyes, Gellert laughed. “You’re blinded by your love.”

Albus pursed his lips and stared at Gellert until his fresh, expressive face glowed with a grin.

“Not so blinded, I see,” he said. “You have your doubts about your brother, too. Why not let him stay then?”

“Out of the question,” Albus responded decisively.

“Come on, Albus,” Gellert insisted, pushing himself to the edge of the bed, taking one of Albus’s hands into his own spell-calloused touch. Albus liked the feeling—thin, delicate fingers marred by the sizzle and scratch of magic beyond their years. “A few more year at Hogwarts will make no difference on him. He doesn’t even wish to return.”

Albus looked down in shame. “Ariana needs me.”

“Albus…”

“No,” he said. “Aberforth shouldn’t be deprived his education just because it suits me.”

“Aunt Batty could homeschool him, couldn’t she?”

“Gellert, why now? We’ve been through this.”

“Ariana _prefers_ Aberforth, acts well for him even.”

Albus frowned deeply and squeezed his grip. “You don’t know the _first_ thing about Ariana, Gellert. Now leave it.”

A flittering candle _popped_ to a snuff as Gellert huffed and crossed his arms. The silent tension was not long before he spoke again. “I want what’s best for you, Albus.”

“What’s best for my family is what’s best for me,” Albus responded simply. “I’m a man of honor and a man of my word.”

Three of Gellert’s fingers pressed against Albus’s cheek, knuckles grazing the red-stubble. He blushed and inhaled slowly, letting himself feel that fleeting emotion, letting the heat build into the unthinkable.

 _Desire_.

“You’re beautiful, you know,” Gellert said softly.

Albus jerked his head back and hissed. “Careful. The walls are thin here.”

The hand followed him, wrapped around his neck. Gellert stood and lowered his gaze, locking his dark gray eyes with Albus’s pale blue. “The shame runs deep. I know.”

“I don’t feel shame,” said Albus unconvincingly. “That is, I don’t feel shame for what you accuse me of—I don’t feel ashamed of you.”

“Hübsch,” said Gellert.

“Hübsch?” Albus repeated, one brow rising.

“It best translates to ‘pretty’ in English, I think,” Gellert explained, combing his fingers through the soft, red tresses.

Albus paled and said nothing more. Gellert thought long and hard with eyes trained on the full, plump lips.

This would not be their end.

 

 

 

Later in the evening, when the air was wet with midsummer dew, Gellert watched the odd fool, Abeforth, lead his goat through Cumberton Field. It must have been a compromise of the gods: they gave the Dumbledore children the intelligence of three people, and placed an unfair share within Albus. Ariana may’ve done better if not for the torment. But Aberforth? Excuseless as he was pitiful. No grammar, no form, no finesse. An ugly face scarred deep with spots and an untamed mess of hair which frizzed and stuck where it didn’t belong. Gellert tapped his fingers against his pocketed wand.

He imagined murdering the younger brother but knew it would solve nothing. He considered walking away, and perhaps in another universe, he did. But a certain impulse hit him for a split moment, a heartbeat, a tiny fraction of a second—and he acted on it.

And later in the evening, with slumping eyes, Aberforth sent his resignation to Hogwarts. He told Albus forced attendance would result in voluntary expulsion. He sat with Ariana and played her sullen, quiet games for hours, him smiling as fools do.

Albus said his goodbyes and left, his papers shoved snuggly in leather valise labeled: ‘eigentum von g.g.’ He laughed when his fingers dipped into the engraving. There was an unexpected truth to that.

 

 

 

They travelled far to places unthinkable, to places which required narrow escapes and unusual talent. The slow-drawling wizards of Appalachia fed them salted biscuits—“no, nothing like the biscuits back home”—and led them up the mounts to find depraved, Dark creatures yet unseen, with eyes like fire and skin which crawled like ants. They took their sample and went on their way to Canada, where a thin, crooked witch spit at their French and directed them to the snows, claiming a small tribe up north could teach them the secret of immortality. Up there, of course, they found no such thing, but learned the tongue of the Chukchi peninsula. It was an adventure to bring home to Aberforth, who was quite content without Hogwarts. Amazing, Albus thought. Ariana calmed and learned a series of Cleaning Charms.

In his arrogance he thought he knew what was best for Aberforth, and in his optimism, he thought he knew how to tame Gellert. He was wrong and he was right.

Europe moved on as Albus and Gellert traversed the diverse terrains of sub-Saharan Africa. They saw Muggle exploitation was worse, far worse, than what was imagined back home, and ingratiated themselves with those who were local. Gellert learned subtlety, tenderness. He could not feel so much, but learned, by memory, to sympathize with the befuddled, unknowing Muggles. That was what his people needed—peace, not warfare; communication, not the bombs which ravaged the lands he loved. Albus was cleverer than he was, he realized. Cleverer in ways unseen.

They touched in privacy—intimately, softly, kindly. Not for lust but for something else. Albus blushed beautifully when his hands learned the true tricks and trades of the art. Gellert admired the soft, lithe curves, the gangly arms, the fiery hair which the locals thought as foreign and odd as Gellert’s own bright, blond braid. They learned much but they did not belong. They left, a decade wiser, with the promise to visit once the war was won.

And it was won with their help. Versailles was signed and ratified. In his old village, where lay a stew of bones and debris, Gellert saw a sentiment brewing, a radical edge which could be carefully harnessed, turned against the Muggles who did this vile act. But he looked to Albus and remembered tenderness, and the two went to work and published and created. The two ignored prejudices and lived a fine life. A dark and desperate history, as it could have been known, went unknown, and Albus was asked to return to Hogwarts. He stipulated he would only do so with Gellert by his side. Dippet, soft and old and senile, complied without second thought.

They raised the students well, even took in a few dark-eyed orphans, one with wits to rival Gellert and talent to rival Albus.

Their life went well and then, when it ended, the sepulcher was dug for both.

 

 

 

Tom Riddle never murdered.

There was never a prison in Nurmengard.

Harry Potter was an ordinary boy.

 

 

 

Albus always said a small amount of love was something extraordinary.

“Maudlin,” Gellert mocked. But he knew it to be true.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for fingeronthepulseofmysoul for the 2017 Grindeldore exchange on Tumblr! Sorry it's late, but I hope it's still enjoyable! I just love these two so much, and I wanted them to have something nice lol. 
> 
> Title comes from Emerson poem quoted at the beginning.


End file.
